At times in Sean Flinn’s life the task at hand can seem overwhelming and stressful. For the past four years, he helped steer Netflix’s foray into online gaming. It is a prospect that is both an exhilarating challenge and a terrifying professional unknown.

But although it has been almost 10 years since he attended UCLA Extension’s Technical Management Program (TMP), in those times of uncertainty, Flinn is still able to reach to what he learned, slow things down and identify a path forward. What he acquired then still has merit today.

Late last year, Flinn realized he had misplaced his TMP certificate of completion, and beyond professional pride, the certificate had personal importance to him.

“It was meaningful, not just the experience but also having the artifact,” he said. “I grew up a son of a diehard UCLA basketball fan. The principles and ideals that program embodied was something he thought highly of and tried to instill in me.”

Flinn grew up in the Inland Empire, in a house where no one had attended UCLA, but the university was front and center thanks to his father’s passionate fandom.

“That was just the part of my upbringing, rooting for the Bruins basketball team,” he said. “I even met John Wooden at a game.”

His father would have loved for him to attend classes in Westwood, but Flinn went to UC Davis to study English and political science. There, he flourished DJing at the campus radio station and writing for the campus newspaper. He enjoyed attending the UC Washington Program where students spent a quarter in Washington, D.C. around the halls of congress.

Despite all those experiences, Flinn found himself adrift after college. He started a web-based music magazine that kept him involved in the arts, but that did not last. Orange County gaming startup GameSpy hired him to help incubate a music-focused startup branch of the company, but the music industry was going under too much upheaval. Napster and other file sharing websites had emerged.

GameSpy shifted Flinn into the development of community platforms for the emergence of online video games. While online gaming forums seem like second nature today, there was virtually no infrastructure in the early 2000s.

“And I’ve been doing that ever since,” Flinn said.

With GameSpy, Flinn contributed to the development of online communities like Rockstar Game’s Social Club and online services used by games including the Battlefield franchise and Command and Conquer. During his time there, GameSpy also helped pave the way for Nintendo Wii and DS online play.

“Those are some of the big experiences I’m proudest of, helping build that business with something that was needle-moving in the industry along with my peers,” Flinn said.

His next stop was at Blizzard Entertainment, known for games like Diablo and World of Warcraft. Flinn’s teams in the company’s Battle.net unit supported the company’s worldwide fan celebration, BlizzCon, and its professional e-sports league based around the game Overwatch. Blizzard was a big believer in professional growth opportunities, and the company sent its leaders to UCLA Extension TMP.

“I was at a level where they were like, ‘Hey, you need to sign up for TMP,” Flinn said with a chuckle. “I was like, ‘Hurray, I can finally tell my dad I went to UCLA.’ I was excited about that.”

TMP serves physicists, engineers, IT professionals, technical staff, data scientists, game designers and more. The program, which turned 70 last year, is aimed at beginner to mid-level managers, and is made up of short courses to provide knowledge and skills that technical professionals need when moving into managerial roles.

For Flinn, the professional coaching by instructor Robert Maurer really stuck with him – the methods of taking workday stress and dealing with it head on.

“Being able to say instead of, ‘I’m stressed – I’m scared.’ ‘Okay, what are you afraid of?’ You can turn that around and target or identify and take action on something,” he said. “That one has stuck with me and I still refer back to it on a daily basis both in my personal and professional life.”

Flinn also learned about, and still employs, problem solving methods like the magic wand theory and ontological framework.

“It creates more organized thinking and drives morale for individual contributors who can see how they are contributing to overall objectives,” he added.

Flinn became a respected leader and an industry veteran – the type Netflix wanted to hire in 2022 for its fledgling foray into video games. He entered the third phase of his now 26-year professional career in online gaming. And since making the move, the Netflix gaming operation has grown from a skeleton crew to a team of hundreds.

“Playing together is a huge part of what makes games fulfilling, engaging and successful,” he said.

Flinn is proud of where he has landed professionally. And TMP contributed to that, while also meaning a lot to a father and son who grew up watching basketball together.

“At the end of the day I did get into UCLA,” Flinn said. “And that was significant to him, and it was significant to me, too.”